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David Byrne Biography |
David Byrne (born May 14, 1952 in Dumbarton, Scotland) is a musician best known as a founding member and the principal songwriter of the New Wave band Talking Heads. He was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended the Rhode Island School of Design for one year before dropping out and forming Talking Heads in 1974. His collaboration with Brian Eno in 1981 on the ground-breaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts attracted considerable critical acclaim, and represented a significant step forward in the evolution of sampling as a legitimate musical endeavour.
His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score. Byrne also directed True Stories, a collage of quirky Americana, as well as the films Île Aiye and Between the Teeth
Byrne founded Luaka Bop, a world music record label which releases the work of artists Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, and others.
Byrne is also a successful photographer, having shown his work in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. His images are sometimes exhibited as part of sound installations. He is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC.
In late 2003, David Byrne released a book/DVD, called Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, of artwork composed entirely in Microsoft PowerPoint. It includes such images as one that depicts, according to Byrne, "Dan Rather's profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlayed on the back of Patrick Stewart's head." [1] (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.html)
On March 16, 2004, Byrne released his latest solo album, titled Grown Backwards, on Nonesuch. This album is most noticeable for its use of orchestral string arrangements, and even includes two operatic arias.
Discography
The Forest (1988)
Rei Momo (1989)
Uh-Oh (1992)
David Byrne (1994)
Feelings (1997)
The Visible Man (1997)
Look Into The Eyeball (2001)
Lead Us Not Into Temptation (2003)
Grown Backwards (2004)
Quote
(On why he hates the term "world music"): "It’s a way of relegating this 'thing' into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant." |
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| David Byrne Resources |
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